The committee is returning after a five-year hiatus, when the board disbanded during the Trump administration
President Joe Biden appointed Grammy Award winner Lady Gaga and producer Bruce Cohen (American Beauty, Silver Linings Playbook) as co-chairs of the revived President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities on Thursday. The board includes a panel of of members that, per the White House, include “prominent artists, scholars, and philanthropists who have demonstrated a serious commitment to the arts and humanities” that serves as an advisory board to Biden on cultural policy.
The committee is returning after a five-year hiatus — the board disbanded during the Trump administration in protest of the former president’s response to the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. At the time, Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides” of the riot that left one dead.
Biden signed an executive order in September to revive the committee, which was created in 1982 under former president Ronald Reagan as part of the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
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Others tapped to the committee include television producer Shonda Rhimes, Grammy Award winner Joe Walsh, and actors George Clooney, Jennifer Garner, Troy Kotsur, Jon Batiste, and Kerry Washington.
Lady Gaga performed “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Biden’s inauguration in 2021, and was a vocal supporter throughout his presidential campaign. When the election was officially called for Biden, she congratulated him and Kamala Harris with the note, “Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the American people, you just gave the world one of the greatest acts of kindness and bravery humanity has ever seen.”
